From the Contents of Esoteric Classes

On-line since: 15th January, 2011

92. EL, Muenchen, 11-19-'11

Today we'll clarify how
one should answer questions that approach one in esoteric life. An
esoteric should never answer: “What is the heart?” by
saying that it's the cause of blood circulation, for he
shouldn't give physical causes for things. Everything physical,
all of our organs and the whole human being are only symbols of
something spiritual, of what higher hierarchies have created. Spirits
of Motion already worked on our blood circulation on the old Sun.
Then Spirits of Form descended and pressed forms and signs on all
created things; and so the heart is only a sign for work that higher
hierarchies did on us.

Everything that surrounds
us is just maya. Good Gods created this world of maya for men, as it were,
like a flower out of the real world so that man develops through it,
kindles his ego on it, and penetrated it to get back to the world of
real things once again. A man definitely needs this world of maya in
his present condition. That's the way one should interpret
Goethe's saying: for what is this beautiful world, the
starry heavens there except for man to be delighted by it? This
is a seemingly naïve expression for the fact that the world in
this form and as we perceive it with our physical senses is really
only there for us. For in reality, in the world of real things,
everything appears with its spiritual causes behind it.

The world of maya doesn't
exist for minerals, plants and up through cold-blooded animals. But
it exists for warm-blooded animals, although the latter have no ego
that could become ignited by it. These animals give a clairvoyant the
impression that they have been brought into evolutionary conditions
that they're not adapted to, and this upsets one. That's
why the humanoid apes give one such a grotesque impression.

As we should become ever
more aware, an esoteric should wrest himself away from maya and connect
himself with the world of real things. He can only do this through
the meditations from the spiritual worlds that are given by the
masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings, those personalities
who support the work of the higher hierarchies. For instance, they
gave a concentration exercise that enables us to help in the work on
evolution. It may take hours and many attempts, but if an esoteric
concentrates on the place where he feels the heart in him,
he'll notice that his thoughts don't remain with the
heart he's concentrating on — they ray or pour out from
there, and he'll see something like a rising, shining star
whose center is the archetype of what the heart is the sign for. And
the star's lines and rays will begin to resound and the sounds
will become words, the primal words that created the heart out of the
world of real things. And when the words are translated they're
the words of the prayer to the Sunday spirit: Great embracing
Spirit, many archetypes sprouted out of your life. (See EL 58)
The star's rays are always the words: You were. Whereas
the lines in between are the other words.

Thus an esoteric arrives
at such an experience through correct, serious exercises. Although many
don't do their mediations intensely enough, one who does can
penetrate the world of real things, and depending on what he brings
with him, he'll feel comfortable or repelled by it. The latter
gives him pain and suffering, but necessarily so. For the good Gods
can only tolerate what fits into their world; everything else is
rejected.

An esoteric may often still
have qualities that he's not fully aware of but which work on his development
and that he's made aware of by certain indications. If an esoteric
does his exercises diligently and correctly, and he wakes up at night
with a feverish feeling, he can oppose this with a psychic coldness;
and then he has a definite feeling that he's not alone, that he
has awakened a doppelganger in himself through his esoteric training.
Who is that? And what does he want? The good Gods have, as it were,
hired certain Luciferic spirits to keep the qualities of men that
don't belong in their world out of it. One of them is Samael,
who counteracts our hate and envy. We notice him through the
feverishness that befalls us as long as we're still full of
these defects.

Another being becomes active
if an esoteric hasn't overcome a certain untruthfulness that
we're all guilty of, and that often lies so deep in our
subconsciousness that we don't notice it. For instance, someone
may decide to go to a theosophical meeting in another city because it
would be instructive and good for him. But in reality he has quite
different motives for going there, for instance, he wants to meet
somebody there, but he doesn't admit this real reason to
himself. Another dishonesty that's hard to notice is the
following. We often think that enthusiasm is driving us into
spiritual worlds, whereas we only want to wallow in the enjoyment of
the feeling that results from occupying oneself with such things. Now
if we do our exercises correctly and we want to press into spiritual
worlds, we might get a feeling of being choked or of someone sitting
on our chest. The Luciferic being who causes this is Azazel. He
hinders us from entering the spiritual world before we've
gotten rid of all lies.

If we do our daily duties
in a lazy, inattentive and careless way, we might have a drowning feeling
on awaking, as if our air was cut off and we were melting and flowing
away.

The attention that we should
pay to the surrounding world is of greater importance than most people
think. If we exercise with real joy, it's a big help in
pressing into spiritual worlds. For we should think of the spiritual
causes behind every thing and encounter. Spiritual beings have to do
what we don't do, because the work must be done.

Here's an example of how
inattentively we often do our work. A new educational program was
being started at a school, and all its teachers had to take an exam.
The humane school inspector told himself: I won't ask the older
teachers what they learned at the seminar long ago — they
wouldn't remember it. I'll only ask them what they taught
every day. But it turned out that many of these teachers did not know
what they'd had their students repeat to them maybe twenty
times. That's how little they'd been paying
attention.

Like these teachers,
we're often not thinking about our work. And the being who has to make
adjustments for this is called Azael in occult parlance.

These three things are
direct defects. A fourth quality we must also get rid of is avoiding
one's karma, instead of courageously going to meet it. Under
such circumstances if we want to press into the world of real things,
we'll wake up in the morn with a feeling of being fettered, as
if we were returning to a prison, and our whole body will hurt. This
is brought about by Mehazael.

Of course exoterics must
also bear the consequences of their defects, but they become manifest in
them differently — as corporeal diseases for instance — and
they don't become aware of why they got something like that. An
esoteric should gradually bring everything into his consciousness,
and esoteric schools help him with this. Of course what we perceive
of such a school with our senses is only a very small part of
it — a faint, outer sign. Just as everything physical, also
sensations that we perceive, are only symbols for realities, so what
an esoteric school looks like on the physical plane is only a symbol
for what it is on the spiritual one. When such a school forms,
it's mostly the case that a man immerses himself say in the
heart through concentration. The experience forms itself into a
formula in him which he can pass on to a number of pupils, whereby
they're reconnected with spiritual realities. Our closing
mantra expresses this creative force that's active in the
spiritual.

In
the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.